


Tomorrow

by justbygrace



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-24 01:47:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8351536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justbygrace/pseuds/justbygrace
Summary: Alternate Title - Some Idle Tuesday Night





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one-shot, people. There will not be more at a later date.

John stared at the fan spinning in lazy circles and wondered if the universe had anything planned for the next five minutes. Somehow he doubted it. Nothing had managed to happen in the last seven and a half hours and he didn't think the universe was in a hurry to change it up. Working the overnight shift at the local convenience store was a lot of things, but exciting wasn't one of them.

The chiming of the stupid bell over the door alerted him that someone had entered the premises, but he barely glanced up from watching the dusty fan blades, idly wondering how it was that fan blades got dust on them in the first place if they were always moving. The sound of squeaky chucks told him all he needed to know about his late-night (or early morning? how exactly did one categorize three am?) visitor.

It was Rose Tyler - the girl (woman really - all woman, not that he had spent any great portion of his life noticing) that lived upstairs. She worked odd hours doing something that always left her with a fine sheen of sweat on her forehead and paint flecks on her jeans. He'd never asked her what she did for a living; it was so much more fun to imagine her life - she was a budding Michelangelo repainting the Sistine Chapel, she was a call girl who specialized in blue-collar workers, she was designing a masterpiece that they would eventually display in city hall - his imagination ran wild.

Their conversations never ran past two minutes and didn't cover anything more interesting than the bill for her spare groceries and the change he was handing her. The only reason he knew her name was because her mail was often delivered to the store and he had to fish it out from under old coupons, lotto tickets, and whatever pack of lights had been left from the daytime shift. Sometimes he wished she'd stick around and chat, other times he was happy with filling in the blanks on his own.

He shifted his attention from the fan (combined with the fifth he was sneaking every couple of minutes, the whirling fan blades meant the world was starting to seem just a tad uneven) to Rose's arse. It wasn't intentional - nor was it the first time he'd spent a portion of his evening admiring her curves (her rear bumper was really a thing of beauty) - but he didn't labor to look anywhere else either. There was something oddly comforting in watching it sway as she debated between milk percentages. It occurred to him that she was adjusting her weight more than usual and that made him wonder when he started keeping track of the average amount that Rose shifted her weight from foot to foot which led to thoughts about averages and shoe brands and a great deal of things that had little to do with anything at all.

She interrupted him by setting down milk (2% per the usual) and bread (wheat, but that kind that might be white if you squinted) and a pack of beer that made him do a double take. She'd never bought alcohol and he wasn't sure what that was going to do to their routine.

"Um, can I see your ID?" He felt awkward about asking, but rules were rules and Wilf would have his head and his job and all his worldly possessions if they got shut down because she was actually undercover.

She stared at him with an uncomprehending look that was equal parts exhaustion and the dawning knowledge that their conversation was about to hit uncharted waters. Fishing in her back pocket she pulled out a stack of receipts and notes and bus tickets and cards and he felt his stomach clench at this unexpected look into Rose Tyler's life.

"Here." She held out her license with a small smile. After a moment she added, "I promise I'm older than I look."

He almost missed taking the card from her hand, his fingernails scraping along the edges. Older than she looked? How old did she look? How old was she? Was there other stuff he should have opinions on? He stared unseeingly at the tiny numbers and words...why did they have to print so small? Grabbing his glasses, he slipped them on and tried to force his eyes to focus.

Rose Marion Tyler. 27th April, 1987. Brown eyes. 1.65 meters. The information kept coming and his brain kept contradicting the facts. Well, not the facts, just the license's impersonal interpretation of the facts. Brown eyes? They were whiskey-colored - the top shelf variety that he sometimes squandered whole paychecks on. 1.65m? She was the perfect height to see eye-to-eye with him without making his 1.85m feel short. 1987? That would make her four years, six months, and some odd days younger than him.

The clearing of her throat made him jump so hard he dropped the card and had to scramble for it, only she was likewise scrambling and their fingers collided in that way that strangers do, but also the way that friends do - apologetic, comfortable, electric, nonchalant, a dizzying maelstrom of feelings that had him reeling. He didn't do this sort of thing and he certainly didn't do it with Rose Tyler ('Rose Marion Tyler' a tiny voice with a suspicious accent reminded him).

He turned back to the register, punching at the buttons and hoping he was hitting all the right ones. He wasn't and he had to cancel out the entire purchase and restart twice and Wilf was going to take him to task for that tomorrow but at the moment he couldn't be arsed because he just wanted his damn hands to stop shaking and could she please stare at something that wasn't the back of his neck?

"John, right?" Her voice broke over the creaky silence and he jumped and entered too many zeroes and had to restart again.

He opened his mouth to tell her that he wasn't ready for anything like first-name basis or things that weren't 'your total is two sixty, please'. "Erm, yeah. John. John Smith. Boring, I know. John Smith, the 10th, if you want to know. Tenth like the number, though I always write it with an X like the Roman numeral because it makes me feel better about a name like John Smith, but it's really hard to say that. John Smith Xth? I don't know enough Latin to know how they pronounced their numerals. My family's pretty unoriginal, actually. Suppose it could be worse. I could be named something like Blon Fel Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen the 10th, you know, and compared to a name like that, John Smith is downright brilliant. Molto Bene! That's a new one, I discovered it the other day and I like how it flows from the tongue. Italian, you know."

Aware that there was a little too much flowing from his tongue, John shut his mouth with difficulty and then had to open it again because he'd finally got the total up on the screen. "Twelve even." He limited himself to two words and carefully raised his eyes to hers because his verbal diarrhea had sent more than one woman screaming for the door.

She was neither screaming nor running for the door, though there was amusement lurking at the corners of her lips, plush, full lips that moved as she responded, but he never did know what she said because her lips were...plush...and full.

Shaking himself like a dog after a downpour, he accepted the money from her and tried to remember how to give back change. After a moment it occurred to him that knowing how much money she'd handed him was a good place to start.

When he finally was able to hand back the correct amount of money and a receipt - go him! - he discovered that she was still watching him with a look that he might almost interpret as "interest" or "attraction" somewhere else on someone else, but was more likely "why is that strange creature bagging my groceries." Grabbing a bag, he set about making his predictions come true.

Except then she spoke. "It's good to finally meet you, John Smith, the Tenth. I don't know Latin, but I think however you say it, it would sound cool and definitely not boring."

He wanted to say something witty and charming, but neither of those attributes had ever been his strong points and didn't miraculously grace him now. Instead he handed over her groceries and allowed his hand to accidentally on purpose brush hers.

"You too, Rose Tyler. Nice to meet you too, I mean." He shut his mouth and smiled before he could finishing digging a hole from which there was no surfacing.

She picked up the bag of milk and bread, hefted the pack of beer off of the counter, and turned towards the back of the store and the stairs to her flat.

"See you tomorrow, John?" It was a question and yet not one and he'd never heard anyone who could make each word sound like a gift without strings attached.

"Tomorrow! Yes, tomorrow. See you tomorrow, Rose Tyler." He hadn't set out to say her first and last name, but they flowed off his tongue more smoothly than molto bene, or allons-y which he had also recently discovered and hadn't yet worked into a conversation.

She smiled over her shoulder at him, a hint of her tongue between her teeth, and he was suddenly converted from being an arse man to a tongue man, and he would follow that tongue to wherever it would lead him, if he got the chance, he really would.

Tomorrow. He liked the sound of that. It was the sound of possibilities and doors opening and timelines that weren't there before. The fan caught his attention and he watched the revolving blades for a second before moving on. He had more important things to focus on. He had Rose Tyler. And he had tomorrow.


End file.
